The Virginian

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Trump SOTU: "Because Americans are dreamers too."

The United States is a compassionate nation. We are proud that we do more than any other country to help the needy, the struggling, and the underprivileged all over the world. But as President of the United States, my highest loyalty, my greatest compassion, and my constant concern is for America’s children, America’s struggling workers, and America’s forgotten communities. I want our youth to grow up to achieve great things. I want our poor to have their chance to rise.

So tonight, I am extending an open hand to work with members of both parties — Democrats and Republicans — to protect our citizens of every background, color, religion, and creed. My duty, and the sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber, is to defend Americans — to protect their safety, their families, their communities, and their right to the American Dream. Because Americans are dreamers too.

Still and idiot

The traditional way of looking at the developing scandals at the FBI and among holdover Obama appointees in the DOJ is that the bizarre atmospherics from candidate and President Trump have simply polarized everyone in Washington, and no one quite knows what is going on.

Another, more helpful, exegesis, however, is to understand that if we’d seen a Hillary Clinton victory in November 2016, which was supposed to be a sure thing, there would now be no scandals at all.

That is, the current players probably broke laws and committed ethical violations not just because they were assured there would be no consequences but also because they thought they’d be rewarded for their laxity.

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Now, FBI investigators have released the results of their investigation claiming that the blunt force trauma all over his body was self-inflicted.

“Mr. Lesin died as a result of blunt for injuries to his head, with contributing causes being blunt force injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities, and lower extremities, which were induced by falls, with acute ethanol intoxication,” the report states.

In other words, the FBI is claiming that Lesin got so drunk that he repeatedly and violently fell on things until he killed himself.

Herzog has awakened from “woke,” as it were, because she found herself attacked by her progressive comrades for Thoughtcrime. She has disagreed with transgender activists and defended Aziz Ansari, among other examples of her political incorrectness. Independent thinking by members of official victim groups — women, racial minorities, homosexuals — is dangerous to the Left because dissent undermines the identity-politics illusion of solidarity against the white heterosexual males who allegedly oppress everyone else. In the 21st century, belief in the pervasive evil of heterosexual white men has become the organizing principle of the Democrat Party, its raison d’être. To suggest to a Democrat in 2018 that perhaps this fathomless contempt for white males is misguided, or that not every member of an official victim group is suffering from oppression, is to commit a sort of political heresy, like denying the existence of witchcraft in 17th-century Salem.

Monday, January 29, 2018

We noted the case of “Minnesota man” Mahad Abdiaziz Abdiraham (or Abdirahman) this past November 14 and November 15. Abdiraham was charged with first-degree assault in connection with the stabbings of two customers at the Macy’s Mall of America’s Macy store on Sunday evening, November 12. The second of the two linked posts quotes the charges.

The stabbing victims were brothers Alexander Sanchez (19 years old) and John Sanchez (25). It was reported that the “younger brother suffered injuries to his head that will leave scars, and cuts to his arms that went ‘to the bone,’ according to the charges. His brother needed dozens of stitches, the court filing revealed.”

The Star Tribune article on the charges noted that no motive for the stabbings was offered in the complaint, but that “it did suggest Abdirahman has had psychological difficulties. In 2016, he was arrested on suspicion of stabbing two staff members with a pen at an inpatient psychiatric unit.” That case apparently went nowhere.

This past Thursday Abdiraham pleaded guilty to the assault charges. The Star Tribune story by Paul Walsh continues to suggest that the motive for the assaults was psychological.

At the plea hearing, however, Abdiraham issued a statement clarifying the motive for his assaults. Abdiraham explained that he was waging jihad in support of ISIS. KSTP-TV Eyewitness News reported:

At the plea hearing Thursday, Abdiraham’s attorney read a statement — which is public record — to the courtroom, which explained why he attacked the two men.

In the statement, Abdiraham said he went to the Mall of America to answer the “call for jihad by the Chief of Believer, Abu-bakr Al-baghdadi, may Allah protect him, and by the Mujahiden of the Islamic State.”

The statement added, “I understand that the two men I stabbed know and have explained the reason for my attack, and I am here reaffirming that it was indeed an act of Jihad in the way of Allah.”

Abdiraham also said in the statement that Americans will not be safe as long as “your country is at war with Islam.”

Eyewitness News reporter Beth McDonough didn’t leave it at that. She also sought comment from interested parties. Twin Cities Somali community spokesman Omar Jamal suggested that Abdirahman is not simply the basket case presented by the Star Tribune. “This is a widespread sentiment with Somali youth,” he said. Jamal said the federal government’s effort to make it difficult for would-be jihadists to travel abroad and join a terrorist group has had unintended consequences locally.

Translation: they are talking about waging jihad here in Minnesota. Lest there be any doubt of his meaning, Jamal explained: “What is very concerning in this instance, is the fact that youth are exploring more ‘How can I do something here, what weapons are accessible.'”

If you don’t know about it, however, you won’t find Abdiraham’s statement “concerning.” Readers of the Star Tribune can persist undisturbed in their blissful ignorance.

And classically, infuriatingly, this episode and its aftermath exposes, once again, the trademark Clinton failure to take personal responsibility; the allergy to owning up to error; the refusal to cede any ground, no less apologize; the incessant double-standarding, with different, more forgiving rules for the Clintons and their loyalists.

Why should she take responsibility when she has millions of loyal followers and the entire news media who will provide cover for her?

The pattern of alarming behavior at the FBI and the Justice Department deserves a recap:

On June 27, 2016, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch held a private meeting with Bill Clinton in a jet at the Phoenix airport, even though the FBI, a branch of the Justice Department, was investigating Mr. Clinton’s wife’s conduct as Secretary of State. A more glaring conflict of interest is hard to imagine.

A week later, on July 5, then-FBI Director James Comey released a report exonerating Mrs. Clinton. He criticized her misuse of emails, but described her violation of national security protocols as “extremely careless” instead of the criminally indictable “grossly negligent” in the original draft. The ever nimble Mr. Strzok has been credited with that edit.

Mr. Strzok also revealed in a text that the FBI team had removed a reference to President Obama as having received a text from Mrs. Clinton when one of them was “on the territory of sophisticated adversaries.” Was it Russia? Alabama?

To downplay the severity of the breach, the FBI report editors cleverly demoted Mr. Obama from president into just “another senior government official,” according to The Journal. The very next day after Mr. Comey’s press conference and release of the report, Ms. Lynch announced that no charges would be filed against Mrs. Clinton, to no great surprise.

Mr. Comey also drafted a statement closing the Clinton email investigation before the FBI even interviewed Mrs. Clinton or her staff.

And, Mr. Comey leaked his own memo to a reporter about a conversation with President Trump in order to trigger the Mueller investigation.

This all adds up to a disturbingly convincing scenario in which partisan FBI officials bent the law to protect Hillary Clinton, sully Donald Trump before the election, and destabilize his presidency afterward.

Sunday, January 28, 2018

We conservatives always thought that tyranny was going to come to us through the government, and therefore we're heavily armed with weapons. And that's not where it's coming from; these people are afraid of paring knives.

They're not coming after us with guns, they're not coming after us with tanks, and they're not coming after us by taking over the government. The defenses that we've established on those lines are overwhelming. They're unassailable defenses; the first amendment essentially still is unassailable, and so is the right to keep and bear arms, and so on.

But in any event, we prepared ourselves so well against invasion from that quarter that they simply decided it was pointless to attack there, so they attacked someplace else. And the censorship that they want is not being enforced by the government, and it's not being backed up by tanks or soldiers with guns; the government's not censoring anything we do.

The censorship that they're looking for, and the control of people's thoughts and minds is accomplished by social opprobrium. It's accomplished by shaming people, and not just shaming them, by ruining their lives in the many ways that they know how to. The way they ruined the lives of the person who decided he didn't want to deliver a cake to a gay wedding: that is not allowed, and so he must be destroyed.

...

So, if the Left doesn't have guns - and they don't; and if they don't have direct government suppression - and they don't; then how have they achieved everything they've achieved, how have they kept us so silenced?

The only power that the Left has - and it's enormous power - the only power that the Left has is the power that you give them yourself: it's the power of social proof.

Social proof and peer pressure is the most powerful motivator in human psychology. Every single one of us out there has things we know to be true - such as certain countries in the world being complete shitholes - and we won't say them, and we won't say them because we know that what will happen to us will be so damning that we just don't want to go through with it.

We also know it doesn't mean physical danger, at least in most cases. ...It's not that we fear physical repercussions, we fear the moral repercussions of what the Left can marshal. But when you get right down to it, really where the rubber meets the road, we do what the Left wants to us to do, because we allow them the power of telling other people who we are.

We think that's more important than what we believe. That's why we don't say what we want to say, that's why we don't speak our minds, why no one is allowed to speak the truth anymore.

It is the common practice of Social Justice Warriors to infiltrate organizations and hobbies in which they have little to no interest -- videogames, comic books, sports, science-fiction awards organizations, all academic fields, etc. -- for the sole purpose of seizing "key nodes and critical infrastructure," as Diversity and Comics notes (echoing US military doctrine), in order to turn non-political pastimes into never-ending propaganda echo chambers -- or destroy them outright, if they cannot be made to serve the regressive left's propaganda mission.

They're deadly parasites for any organization that allows them to crawl inside their bodies.

But these organizations let them in -- hell, they actively seek them out -- just so that social justice blogs and websites like The Mary Sue or Buzzfeed will give them the Social Justice Warrior Stamp of Approval.

Trouble is, as Marvel Comics is finding out, Social Justice Warriors are not consumers of any of these products, and will not buy them even if they have been converted into full Social Justice Warrior propaganda outfits.

These organizations are being infiltrated by Social Justice Warriors not because Social Justice Warriors like them or the cultural products they produce, but because Social Justice Warriors know that non- Social Justice Warriors enjoy these products, and thus these cultural artifacts must be seized and repurposed to serve leftist indoctrination ends or simply destroyed.

If they cannot be remade to be useful indoctrination centers, then they must be destroyed, so that, at least, non-Social Justice Warriors will have one less enjoyable thing in their lives, and may be forced to seek Social Justice Warrior-controlled entertainments as an alternative.

Two or more sides disagree on who runs the country. And they can’t settle the question through elections because they don’t even agree that elections are how you decide who’s in charge.

That’s the basic issue here. Who decides who runs the country? When you hate each other but accept the election results, you have a country. When you stop accepting election results, you have a countdown to a civil war.

I know you’re all thinking about President Trump.

He won and the establishment, the media, the democrats, rejected the results. They came up with a whole bunch of conspiracy theories to explain why he didn’t really win. It was the Russians. And the FBI. And sexism, Obama, Bernie Sanders and white people.

It’s easier to make a list of the things that Hillary Clinton doesn’t blame for losing the election. It’s going to be a short list.

A really short list. Herself.

The Mueller investigation is about removing President Trump from office and overturning the results of an election. We all know that. But it’s not the first time they’ve done this.

The first time a Republican president was elected this century, they said he didn’t really win. The Supreme Court gave him the election. There’s a pattern here.

Trump didn’t really win the election. Bush didn’t really win the election. Every time a Republican president won an election this century, the Democrats insist he didn’t really win.

....

There’s no shooting. At least not unless you count the attempt to kill a bunch of Republicans at a charity baseball game practice. But the Democrats have rejected our system of government.

This isn’t dissent. It’s not disagreement.

You can hate the other party. You can think they’re the worst thing that ever happened to the country. But then you work harder to win the next election. When you consistently reject the results of elections that you don’t win, what you want is a dictatorship.

Your very own dictatorship.

The only legitimate exercise of power in this country, according to the left, is its own. Whenever Republicans exercise power, it’s inherently illegitimate.

It's sad that so many outlets are treating the rigorous survey work of an elementary school student as the statistic about plastic straw use. But it's not very surprising. Attempts to ban plastic straws—or indeed any plastic product—have as much to do with signaling your environmentalist bona fides as they do with actually cleaning up the oceans or saving the planet. So people pushing the claim have little incentive to investigate it. And the media have every incentive to hype the impact of a phenomenon they're covering.

Let this serve as a reminder: A statistic's popularity does not prove its accuracy.

I would also tell those who live in states where gun rights are not so restrictive, don’t get complacent. Our rights here were not in danger overnight. We didn’t start off this way, politicians snuck in like a fox in a henhouse and started taking them one by one.

Mocking us here by saying we elected stupid leaders are only partially true, some of us are fighting back, some of us want to enjoy where we live, raise our kids and have grown up. That’s what its like to be in occupied territory.

The talk is all about the 50,000 text messages, but until now no one mentioned that very few have actually been shown to Congressional investigators. What's hidden from them ... and you?

There is much confusion over some basic facts of the Strzok-Page texts. How many are there? How many relate to the two most politically-charged investigations in years, the Trump-Russia probe and the Hillary Clinton email investigation? How many have been turned over to Congress? And how many are left to be turned over to Congress?

The answers are complicated, but here is what I have been able to figure out from conversations with the Justice Department and Capitol Hill investigators.

The Justice Department has identified about 50,000 Strzok-Page texts. But that is apart from the texts between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017 that were declared missing a week ago but are now being recovered. So, the total is apparently 50,000 plus the currently unknown number of formerly missing texts.

But that number refers only to the Strzok-Page texts that were sent and received on FBI-issued Samsung phones. There are a number of instances in the texts in which the two officials say that they should switch the conversation to iMessage, suggesting they continued to talk about FBI matters on personal Apple phones. For investigators, those are particularly intriguing texts – what was so sensitive that they couldn't discuss on their work phones? – but the number of those texts is unknown. And of course, they have not been turned over to Congress.

How many texts have been turned over? Both Justice Department and Capitol Hill sources say the total number is in the 7,000 range, which includes all the texts handed over on two separate occasions.

After what we now know about the FBI and DOJ, still mostly staffed by Obama holdovers, this does not give me any confidence that we are getting the whole picture, just the picture they want us to see.

It’s confounding reporters and TV commentators without critical thinking skills (take your pick off the “Morning Joe” set) that people just don’t seem to care about Stormy Daniels, the porn actress President Trump allegedly paid off to keep quiet before the 2016 election.

Why isn’t this hurting him?!

The answer is simple: 1) Everyone knows Trump has a tacky history; voters chose him anyway, and 2) by the way — we have a country we're trying to save here!

Point one still scandalizes the media, but the rest of the country has its eyes on point two.

...

The always hysterical liberal columnist Charles Blow wrote in the New York Times, “If this were Barack Obama, Tiki-torch-toting Nazis would have descended on the White House and burned it to the ground. Not only that, America’s racist folks masquerading as religious folks would have used Obama’s moral failing as proof of a black pathology.”

...

That his supporters, including Evangelicals, were willing to overlook Trump’s gaudy past in favor of his policies on immigration, the economy, and Islamic terrorism demonstrates how powerful those issues are and how well Trump captures the national mood.

The media don’t understand why the Stormy Daniels story hasn’t engulfed the White House. That’s because they don’t understand the issues Trump won with America.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

This could be a question about Harvey Weinstein - it's not - but it's about so many of those who have abused others.

At the risk of coming across as prurient, or perhaps just over-inquisitive, I always want to know what the perp actually did in these cases. What Larry Nassar did was, he touched the breasts and private parts of young girls while examining them, including three who were younger than thirteen, and penetrated them with his finger, all against their will.

My question: Nassar was doing the stuff he was doing for twenty-five years. How’d he get away with it for so long?

Part of the answer, I’m sure, is the same as the answer to the same question in the matter of show business sexual harassment. In both cases there was a thing that the harassees wanted very, very badly —so badly that they, or in the case of younger victims, more likely their parents—might have considered that submitting to harassment or molestation was a price worth paying for that thing.

In the showbiz cases the thing wanted was a movie part; in Nassar’s case, a shot at competing in the Olympics.

And then this:

Nassar was convicted just last month in federal court on charges related to possessing, creating, and destroying child pornography. For that federal conviction he got a sixty-year sentence, of which under federal rules he will have to serve fifty-five years.

Obviously, this is a nasty creepy guy. There’s no making excuses for Larry Nassar. The news story does, though, tell us something about our strange times, and about the disturbing level of unreasoning feminized hysteria in society today. If you don’t know the etymology of the word “hysteria,” I’ll pause a moment while you look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls … okay.

First, the sentence. The state judge, name of Rosemarie Aquilina ../ gave Larry Nassar 40 to 175 years on the molestation charges. I’m not clear how that sentence is structured or how many years he is likely to serve, but it sure looks like decades.

And that, according to the judge, is after he’s served the sixty-year federal sentence.

Sixty plus 175 is 235. Two hundred and thirty-five years—longer than the entire history of our republic. You don’t have to be a fan of pedophilia to wonder if that isn’t disproportionate.

Two hundred and thirty-five years? For crimes in which no-one was killed, maimed, battered or disfigured, and nothing was stolen? How much time does your average murderer serve nowadays, or arsonist, or rapist—a rapist, I mean, who employs more than his finger?

Again, I’m not making excuses for Nassar. He’s a loathsome creep. He should certainly have been fired from his job, stripped of his medical license, and put on some federal register—I’m pretty sure there is one—to ensure that he could never again be alone with young girls anywhere in the U.S.A.

Jail time? Yes; if I were sentencing I’d give him five to ten on all the charges combined. But two hundred and thirty-five years? Come on.

Reading the news story and looking at the accompanying pictures, it’s clear that the courtroom was fogged up with estrogen vapours. The sentencing judge disgraced her profession, wrapping her sentence in a preening, gloating, vindictive diatribe. Here’s the low point.

[Clip, at 0m55s here: Our Constitution does not allow for cruel and unusual punishment. If it did, I have to say, I might allow what he did, to all of these beautiful souls, these young women in their childhood … I would allow someone, or many people, to do to him what he did to others.]

Hey, what do we hire judges for, if not to let loose with their violent vengeance fantasies on nationwide TV?

The judge’s theatricals were supported by a weeping, ululating Greek Chorus of women that Nassar had molested. They’d spent four days sobbing their way through victim impact statements in the courtroom.

Once again for emphasis: Larry Nassar is a disgusting pervert, if we’re still allowed to say “pervert,” and I’d have sent him down for five to ten with a clear conscience. I just don’t agree that what he did was as sensationally horrible as the court, and my New York Post, were making it out to be.

I know I’m a geezer and out of touch, but in my generation, unless you were spectacularly ugly, you didn’t make it through childhood and adolescence without an occasional pervert coming on at you. It’s not an uncommon thing in the world, and I’m dubious about the claims of permanent mental distress. That Greek chorus in the courtroom keening about their victimhood looked pretty healthy, when they removed their hankies from their eyes long enough for you to get a look at them.

But of course we are in a feminist moment, and keening about victimhood is what every red-blooded American girl is encouraged to do nowadays. I note that not only the judge but also the prosecuting attorneys were females; so was the judge in last month’s federal case.

While the right covers this, that, and the other thing, the MSM and the left is obsessed with the NY Times’ report that Trump tried to fire Mueller and was talked out of it. Go to memeorandum and you’ll see what I mean.

Once again, they seem to think this is some sort of smoking gun that will sink Trump. And they are waiting with bated breath, of course, for Mueller’s report. Meanwhile, Trump calls it “fake news.”

The problem for the Times at this point is that, even though Trump is certainly capable of lying through his teeth about whether or not he seriously considered firing Mueller, the Times may have even less credibility. That’s what happens when you cry “wolf” over and over and over.

This particular story is just the latest iteration of a long series of stories saying the same thing (you can read about some of the history here). I am virtually certain that most of my liberal friends believe the stories are all true (if they follow them at all, that is).

I do not believe they are true, although they certainly might be true, and I do not believe that they are not true. There is simply no way to know. But the MSM’s track record on this sort of thing is bad. Their undisguised and virulent animus towards Trump, and the number of their previous Trump-critical stories that have never been confirmed or have turned out to be flat wrong, make it difficult for people who are not already on the left to believe them.

But I have an additional question. Let’s say that the Times report is true. Let’s say that Trump wanted to fire Mueller last June and was talked out of it by, among other things, his counsel’s threat to resign. What is the news here? The idea that Trump might have some autocratic impulses isn’t news. The idea that he might be enraged that Mueller was investigating him isn’t news, either; I’m hard-pressed to come up with any president I can think of who would take it with equanimity and a smile. The fact that Trump was talked out of that autocratic impulse makes it seem (to me, at least) as though his desire to fire Mueller either wasn’t incredibly strong to begin with and/or that he realized the repercussions would be worse than the problem. That latter possibility makes him sound reasonable, or at least amenable to persuasion/reason on a practical basis.

That sounds all too dreadfully familiar, doesn’t it? The State above the Law, the state that does whatever it “needs” to for the good of the State, however defined. Or acts to impose the General Will in order to free everyone, because true freedom is obeying the will of the People. The little people, the deplorables, the rabble, don’t need to know this. They can’t be trusted to know what’s good for them. They betray their own best interests by voting against their interests. So wise leaders are needed. Just because he was elected doesn’t mean he’s really the president, and we need to get rid of him before he “damages” the State.

The State always knows better, or so devoted loyalists and fans of the State claim. “Only the government should be able to…” is probably a good test question. Once you get past “conduct international diplomacy,” and “wage war,” and “have nuclear weapons,” and possibly “set international tariffs and export fees,” arguments start getting warm. I lean toward “Is it in the Constitution, explicitly in the Constitution? Then probably not.” Others prefer, “If it is not explicitly prohibited by the Constitution, the State needs to do it/should do it/can do it better.” And then I think of Kipling’s lines.

The State above the Law has been in the news far too much recently. By far too much, I mean the very idea of a federal agency’s members discussing forming a group to work against the president in order to end his or her term in office should be unthinkable. But apparently, some employees of the State believed that their idea of the State was above the law and must be preserved from any threat, in this case the head of the executive branch. One is reminded of Communist Party of the USSR members planning how to retire Khrushchev, except without the pension and nice dacha. Because if the President is bad for the State, he is bad for everything else and must be removed, even if duly elected by the people and/or the Electoral College.

You want a revolution, civil war, more Trump ... or a man on a White Horse? This is how you get it.

“People who don’t eat [food] have a 20% greater risk of colon cancer!”

“You have all the risk factors for skin cancer.”

“People with a family history of [malady] have a 40% greater chance of getting [malady] than the rest of the population does.”

Sigh. Just what my nerves need to hear. But what is my risk? What are the odds of my having [malady]? You notice that the news articles never really give you that information?

Scare-tistics. That’s what I’m starting to call the numbers tossed around by media outlets, often concerning health topics but also environment, health insurance, and the like. The goal is to get you to stop and watch/listen/read. Scare-tistics are not really helpful.

For example, and I’ll pull numbers out of the air, because the news piece came out a few years ago, but there was breathless reportage that “breast cancer diagnoses are up over thirty percent from forty years ago!” and implied that some dreadful thing in the environment was causing breast cancer. To which the person in my family who works in a related medical field snorted and said something that rhymes with “pulpit.” What has happened is that 1) mammography has become cheap and common, and 2) because of that and better technology and imaging, more and more tumors are found that would not have been caught before because of their tiny size. Many of those are very slow-growing, most are not malignant at the time of discovery and are tracked but not removed.

Of those diagnosed with cancer, back before mammograms, sometimes the woman would have died of something else first without anyone guessing that they had breast cancer, like my great-grandparent. She/He died of heart failure and his/her autopsy revealed un-diagnosed [organ]* cancer. Her/His heart got him/her, not the cancer. She/He was in his/her 80s. Today, there are women in their 90s who are diagnosed with breast cancer, but who are suffering from other maladies that will do them in long before the cancer would.

Friday, January 26, 2018

What happens when federal agencies accused of possible wrongdoing — also control the alleged evidence against them? What happens when they’re the ones in charge of who inside their agencies — or connected to them — ultimately gets investigated and possibly charged?

Those questions are moving to the forefront as the facts play out in the investigations into our intelligence agencies’ surveillance activities.

There are two overarching issues.

First, there’s the alleged improper use of politically-funded opposition research to justify secret warrants to spy on U.S. citizens for political purposes.

Second, if corruption is ultimately identified at high levels in our intel agencies, it would necessitate a re-examination of every case and issue the officials touched over the past decade — or two — under administrations of both parties.

This is why I think the concerns transcend typical party politics.

It touches everybody. It’s potentially monumental.

This week, the FBI said it was unfair for the House Intelligence Committee not to provide its memo outlining alleged FBI abuses. The committee wrote the summary memo after reviewing classified government documents in the Trump-Russia probe.

The FBI’s complaint carries a note of irony considering that the agency has notoriously stonewalled Congress. Even when finally agreeing to provide requested documents, the Department of Justice uses the documents’ classified nature to severely restrict who can see them — even among members of Congress who possess the appropriate security clearance. Members who wish to view the documents must report to special locations during prescribed hours in the presence of Department of Justice minders who supervise them as they’re permitted to take handwritten notes only (you know, like the 1960s).

What most people don’t know is that the FBI and Department of Justice already know exactly what Congressional investigators have flagged in the documents they’ve reviewed, because three weeks ago the Senate Judiciary Committee sent its own summary memo to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Department of Justice Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The committee also referred to the Department of Justice a recommendation for possible charges against the author of the political opposition research file, the so-called “Trump dossier”: Christopher Steele.

The head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Charles Grassley co-authored the memo with fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. Grassley says it’s important for the public to see the unclassified portions of the memo. But unlike the House, which can release the memo on its own (and is taking steps to do so), Senate rules require permission from the Department of Justice — the possibly offending agency — approve or declassify the memo. And that’s reached a snag.

According to Grassley, the FBI is blocking the release of the unclassified sections of the Senate memo by falsely claiming that they contain classified information.

“It sure looks like a bureaucratic game of hide the ball, rather than a genuine concern about national security,” said Grassley in a speech on the Senate floor yesterday.

Grassley also pointed out that agencies accused of possible improprieties are the ones controlling the information. It’s the FBI who may have misused the unverified “dossier” opposition research, allegedly presenting it to a secret court as if it were verified intelligence.

“[FBI] Director [James] Comey testified in 2017 that it was ‘salacious and unverified’,” said Grassley. “So, it was a collection of unverified opposition research funded by a political opponent in an election year. Would it be proper for the Obama administration — or any administration — to use something like that to authorize further investigation that intrudes on the privacy of people associated with its political opponents? That should bother civil libertarians of any political stripe.”

...

This is the first time I can recall open government groups and many reporters joining in the argument to keep the information secret. They are strangely uncurious about alleged improprieties with implications of the worst kind: Stasi-like tactics used against Americans. “Don’t be irresponsible and reveal sources and methods,” they plead.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

The ho-hum public response to the allegations could reflect scandal fatigue or, sadly, the widespread belief that Donald Trump covering up affairs with porn stars is neither out of character nor any big deal.

But it also could mean that what the president has accomplished in his first year matters more. Jobless claims last week were the lowest on record in 45 years. Target and Wal-Mart are increasing pay and handing out bonuses. Apple, which has deferred paying taxes on foreign earning for years, has announced that it is bringing billions in cash back to the U.S. to invest. Visa and Aflac are increasing their 401(k) match for employees. Mr. Trump not only promised tax reform and delivered tax reform but every early indication is that the tax reform is doing what he said it would do.

Heaven knows what outrages the Trump presidency will bring our way in 2018—and maybe voters will wait until the midterm elections to vent—but right now Americans seem more focused on what he’s achieved.

The point is that the American people knew that Donald Trump was a trice married womanizer who bragged about his affairs with women - many of whom were married - before the election ... and elected him anyway. To have the press report on this and expect the public to be outraged is to totally misunderstand the American people.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton blasted DOJ and noted that his organization is pursuing multiple FOIA lawsuits related to government surveillance of President Donald Trump during the campaign and illegal disclosure of information pertaining to that surveillance.

"No argument can be made that a request for the release of budget numbers somehow interferes with his investigation."

"Special counsel Mueller's operation is not above the law," Fitton said in a statement. "The American people have a right to know how much taxpayer money is planned for his massive investigation. No one else in D.C. seems to be providing oversight of the Mueller operation, so once again it is up to the citizen's group Judicial Watch to go to fight for accountability."

This was the big climate change fear in the 1970s.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Summary of Virginian Pilot Editorial page 1/23/2018

Editorial: Medicaid for all because government can "provide better service" at lower cost. Government will "incentivize people to really have good health." [said with a straight face. The best lie since "you can keep your doctor and your plan." Are your ready for the good health police coming to your house to incentivize you? If not, hope that this exercise in medical Fascism fails, or it's all "boob bait for the Bubbas" as Bill Clinton famously put it.]

Op Ed: Cal Thomas on the Washington Swamp and its creatures.

Letters to the editor:

Marsha Neblitt: passive aggressive attack by a transplanted New Yorker on Trump.

Casey Dokoupil: demonstrates that he/she/it failed Civics 101.

George Gay: proves he did pass Civics 101.

Herman A. Cox, Jr: doesn't want immigrants to be the best and brightest. What America really needs is wretched refuse immigrating here because we don't have enough of our own.

Linwood Branch: former city council member wants new pier and civility in city council meetings. Could use a lesson in writing clearly.

Monday, January 22, 2018

One of the more entertaining bits of black humor on Steve Sailer’s blog are the stories he posts about how every problem can be solved with more immigration. No matter the problem, someone will have a reason why the solution to it is more immigration. It’s as if our elites have a bizarre form of Tourette’s, where any stimulation causes them to blurt out lines from Emma Lazarus. When the lunacy of their claims is pointed out, the response is usually just a blank stare, suggesting their enthusiasm for open borders is involuntary.

The reason for this is the people championing open borders are not working from a set of facts, or arguments from those facts. Sure, the indentured servant lobbies are thinking in economic terms. The refugee lobbies want the money spigot to remain open, but these are relatively small influences on public debate. The vast majority of people championing open borders have no monetary incentives. They are doing it because they view the issue in purely moral terms. They are pro-immigrant in the same way normal people are pro-life.

Among the cognitive elites, there is a strong social incentive for embracing ever more extreme positions on the popular fads of the moment. It’s how we went so quickly from tolerating homosexuals to embracing mentally disturbed men in sundresses. Similarly, it is how miscegenation went from casual outlier to the only acceptable form of mating. When it comes to immigration, the furthest possible extreme is open borders, so the game is to come up with ever more creative ways of justifying it....

We are ruled over by fanatics, convinced that anything worth doing is worth overdoing. They are like addicts seeking a high more intense than the one before it. You don’t talk an addict out of his blind quest for the ultimate high. He has to find that limit on his own. That usually means dying in a pool of his own vomit. That’s most likely the fate of our rulers. They will realize they have gone too far just as the trap door snaps open and they begin the drop.

A former federal prosecutor says the truth is starting to seep out about the Obama Administration’s “brazen plot to exonerate Hillary Clinton” and “frame an incoming president with a false Russian conspiracy,” according to an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Joe diGenova, a former federal prosecutor, connects the dots on former Obama administration Justice Department and FBI officials who may have “violated the law, perhaps committed crimes” to politicize law enforcement and surveillance against political opponents.

He says former FBI Director James Comey conducted a fake criminal investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as they “followed none of the regular rules, gave her every break in the book, immunized all kinds of people, allowed the destruction of evidence, with no grand jury, no subpoenas, no search warrants. That’s not an investigation. That’s a Potemkin village. It’s a farce.”

It's becoming too obvious to ignore. At this point more people are beginning to believe that the FBI, DOJ, CIA and the entire security apparatus of the US under Obama was one large criminal enterprise.

A month before the 2016 election, Obama mocked Trump’s campaign on “Jimmy Kimmel.” Obama read a tweet from Trump saying that Obama “will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States,” before turning Trump into a punchline. “Really? Well, @realDonaldTrump, at least I will go down as a president,” Obama said, dropping his phone on the floor for dramatic effect.

Following which Trump is dismantling the Obama agenda and Making America Great Again.

The bad news for Obama: Trump has at least three more years to get the last laugh.

Donald Trump was inaugurated one year ago after promising to make America great again. Throughout the campaign everyone knew what he believed, though it was not clear what his opponents stood for.

The Schumer shutdown has revealed the totality of the Democrats’ agenda: animosity and amnesty.

When President Trump set out to deliver historic tax cuts for the American people, Democrats sat on their hands, rather than participating in the legislative process.

Now they’ve come off the sidelines to actively sabotage the government established to serve the American people.

Their stated reason for doing so is even more astounding than the act itself.

Never before in American history has a major political party put the interests of lawbreaking foreign nationals ahead of the interests of law abiding Americans. Yet that is exactly what the Democrats have done in holding the government hostage to extract special favors for illegal immigrants.

This is a remarkable achievement — and it’s the only achievement the Democrats can claim since blowing their “sure thing” election in 2016.

We already knew the Washington Democrats hated Trump.

Now we know they oppose not just the president, but American government, the American people and even the very concept of American citizenship as well.